You Gotta Take The Bad To Get To The Good

The expanded Big Ten put in its claim of being the top football conference in the nation last season with the eventual national champion coming from its 18-team pool along with three other member schools one going to the national semifinals.

There is a reality however, for every Ohio State versus Oregon regular season game, there is going to be a Minnesota vs. Duluth Technical College game to poison everyone’s eyes. It is unrealistic to expect teams to play a 12-game regular season against teams equal to or better than them and have any sort of success in the national standings.

We can all focus on the best games of the season, and we will be getting to that first. But sometimes you just need to woof down your vegetables first before you can get to the desert and there is no shortage of “I’d rather mow the lawn than watch” games on the schedules of Big Ten teams in the upcoming 2025 season.

Teams have a mixture of Division I-FCS opponents along with some of the bottom teams in the Group of Five (or is it six, or really is any team not in the Big Ten or the SEC just about equal in terms of irrelevancy? I will let you decide upon that yourself).

Even Ohio State has a game that will be remembered more for the bands than the football with Grambling coming to town. That game will take place the week following a week one tilt with Texas, so when coupled with nine league games, five on the road, and it is okay to give Ohio State a bit of a pass for booking a sub-.500 FCS team to round out the schedule.

Taking Ohio State off the table though, which five (or so) games on the upcoming schedules are sure to be eye poison? Everyone has their own reasons to schedule these games, an attempt to get to six wins and make an elusive bowl game.

Or maybe just a statehouse deal to play an in-state team, keeping dollars home and help prop up a team that has no chance to be cashflow positive.

Fortunately, most of these ‘bad games’ will take place on week one and week two of the season and you will have time to mentally bleach them from your long-term memory. What are the five games that you should avoid at all costs? Let’s take a look.

Week One

Western Illinois versus Illinois

Illinois is supposed to be better than usual this year but this game stinks worse than a Rush Street dumpster after St. Patrick’s Day. I am even more sickened with the fact that this game won’t even be diluted on a Saturday with actual good content, but is moved to a Friday, with limited options and football-starved fans will have to subject themselves to this one.

Western Illinois is going to collect two big checks, playing Northwestern in its cute little soccer field stadium the following week, being a punching bag for two Big Ten teams to fund the program for the other 363 days of the year. I am not going to write about the Leathernecks twice, I am not paid enough for that.

As you can expect, anyone on Western Illinois that shines will go to the portal, making this a team that rely upon the portal, bringing in 20 mid-year transfers, including transfers from powerhouse programs like Black Hills State University, Butte Community College, Stetson, and Walsh.

Illinois is 3-0-0 all-time in this series, I am shocked that a program that underachieves to the level of the Illini have not paid for this sure win more often.

One thing that I do know, the Illini will roll the Leathernecks and the stock around the Orange and Blue will never be higher than it is after its week one romp of WIU.

Albany at Iowa

This will be the first meeting between football juggernauts Iowa and Albany. Yes, Jared Verse was a Great Dane of Albany before transferring to Florida State. And yes, Vinny Testaverde played at Albany as well, but that would be Vinny Jr. and not his more famous father.

Albany will come into this game with a brand-new head coach and Iowa will come into this game looking brand new on offense, at least in a sense that it will look like it has never played a day of offense since the days of Hayden Fry.

I am not going to give Iowa and sort of a break for scheduling this game with UMass also on the schedule along with Iowa State. Okay, the rivalry game to be the King of Corn, or whatever the hell they do out there, against ISU is a plus game, at least in the sense of hate and familiarity, but Albany is a couple of years removed from making it to the FCS semifinals before getting shucked to the tune of 59-0 against South Dakota State.

Maybe Iowa breaks 28 points in this game and gives fans a belief that ‘this is the year’ that Iowa competes in the Big Ten. The Hawkeyes won’t really be severely tested until a week seven game at Wisconsin.

I would say there are a lot of things better to do than watch this game, but if you live in Iowa, this may be the high point of your week.

Alternative viewing: Texas at Ohio State, Nebraska vs. Cincinnati. These games are different but the same in the sense that they won’t send your soul to football hell

Week Two

Northwestern State at Minnesota

How many people out there are aware of the existence of Northwestern State? How many people knew that Northwestern State is in the state of Louisiana, more specifically in Natchitoches? How many people can actually pronounce Natchitoches?

But PJ Fleck and his boat of lies managed to find the Demons and schedule them. All that we are assured of is three hours of eye hell as the Demons will be exorcised.

How bad is Northwestern State?

The good news is that things can only go up after an 0-12 season (technically, they could just maintain that with a matching 0-12 record in 2025).

Last season, Northwestern State played one game within 10 points of an opponent in a six-point loss to Prairie View A&M. This was a team that lost 87-10 to South Alabama, 62-28 to Kevin Wilson’s Tulsa team, and 62-24 to Houston Christian, the program that is sending quarterback Eli Brickhandler to Ohio State via the transfer portal.

The Gophers were above .500 last season, winning a bowl game against Virginia Tech and likely prompting PJ Fleck to decry that 2025 was going to be the breakthrough year for Minnesota.

Strangely enough, Minnesota has played in bowl games in the past four seasons, winning all of them. But it is a long way since 2019, the last time that the Gophers had a share of a divisional title in the Big Ten.

How badly do I want to ignore this game? I would rather drip the molten cheese from a Jucy Lucy (sic) into my eyes than watch two seconds of this game.

This will be the first ever football meetings between these two teams and if there is a higher power that loves us, it will be the last.

Kennesaw State at Indiana

Don’t confuse this with former MLB commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, a former Federal Judge that took over the leadership role of baseball during a troubling time and banned the Chicago ‘Black Sox’ from the sport after the 1919 World Series.

No, Kennesaw State is a program north of Atlanta and while the Owls had success in Division I-FCS, the move into FBS has not been as smooth has hoped, going 2-10 last season in its first year as a member of Conference USA.

Yes, I had to Google some of that, but it was easy as I was Googling Curt Cignetti.

Indiana’s last game on the football field last season didn’t go according to plan as the Hoosiers were outclassed by Notre Dame in the first round of the College Football Playoffs, and what likely will end up being Cignetti’s best team in Bloomington as his one-year rentals from James Madison have now moved on.

Is this the biggest game that Kennesaw State has played since being a full-fledged member of FBS football?

The bar is pretty low with 2024 seeing non-league road games at UT-San Antonio and at San José State. That year would see KSU go just 2-10 on the season with wins at home against Liberty and FIU.

The Hoosiers are going to come out with a chip on their shoulders, or at least a fried pork tenderloin sandwich (IYKYK) and this game is going to get ugly, bigly.

I am not sold on IU this upcoming season, but I do know that my expectations for Kennesaw State are lower than the average speed of a commuter on I-75 in Atlanta during evening rush hour.

Alterative viewing: About that… Iowa vs. Iowa State? Oregon vs. Oklahoma State? This is the weekend to get married

Week Three

Youngstown State at Michigan State

With apologies to Jim Tressel and Tony Hinchcliffe, this is going to be a bad game.

It has been a minute since the Penguins celebrated the success under Jim Tressel the coach versus Jim Tressel the University President or Jim Tressel the Lieutenant Governor of Ohio.

We are talking about a YSU team that went 4-8 last year and gave up 73 points to Pittsburgh and 63 points to South Dakota State.

Sure, YSU also stunned North Dakota with a 41-40 win, but that was at home, not a road game on the banks of the Red Cedar.

Of the five (or six) games that I am highlighting, this game has the best watchability score of the lot, somewhere north of watching paint dry while mosquitos bombard your eyes but south of two dogs sniffing each other’s hind quarters.

Sparty didn’t exactly go nuts in the non-conference last season, eking out a win over Florida Atlantic and dropping a tough game to Boston College.

But another year leading the program for Jonathan Smith will have Michigan State in a better position.

The non-conference schedule in 2025 for MSU is completely and totally unremarkable with the addition of a return game against BC and a game against in-state Western Michigan.

I would be one focused on fading Michigan State over the course of a football season but this game is going to go one of two ways, Sparty will come out and play an uninspired game and make it closer than it needs to be in a 31-17 type of game or Sparty will just take flight and leave the Penguins to suffer on the ice in a rout.

Either way, this game has all the makings of being a snoozer. Avoid at all costs.

Alternative viewing: Northwestern vs. Oregon, USC vs. Purdue, Wisconsin vs. Alabama. Two are league games and the other will teach us a lot about both the Badgers and Tide

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